Minneapolis sees civic push for open data; Minneapolis Star Tribune, 2/1/14

Eric Roper, Minneapolis Star Tribune; Minneapolis sees civic push for open data:

"Residents of Chicago can track their city’s plows and pothole repairs in real time. In Seattle, 911 calls are quickly detailed online. New Yorkers can sift through city contracts with a simple mouse click.

Minneapolis has kept a tight grip on the information it collects even as cities across the country open up streams of public data to developers, journalists and the public. But this past November’s election has spurred calls at City Hall to liberate that data, from food inspections to landlord violations, so it can be analyzed and manipulated for the public good.

“I figured when I came to Minneapolis that I was going to find a liberal, open place — very progressive, etcetera,” Otto Doll, the city’s chief information officer, told a gathering of data enthusiasts last week. “And we are, in certain ways, but not with our data.”...

“Really what this is doing is it’s transforming the way in which a government performs,” says Ian Kalin, open data manager for Socrata, a Seattle-based company that works with governments across the country to open data sets and store them online. He estimates that more than 100 governments in the U.S. have launched open data initiatives, mostly in the past five years.

Socrata works with Chicago, which has released nearly 1,000 data sets. Developers there have created apps that allow the public to dig into detailed crime statistics, research the most active lobbyists, locate vacant buildings and track city legislation."

New York, the Silicon City; New York Times, 1/6/14

Michael Mandel, New York Times; New York, the Silicon City:

"New York has, over the last decade, become a tech city to rival San Francisco, Boston and Seattle...

The rapid growth of minorities in New York tech jobs reflects, in part, the soaring number of tech degrees earned by minorities in recent years. For example, bachelor’s degrees in computer and information sciences granted to Hispanic students have risen by more than 40 percent nationally over the past three years, according to data from the National Center for Education Statistics...

What lessons does this have for the new mayor? New York’s gains came, in part, from the aggressive efforts of the Bloomberg administration to stimulate the technology and information sector. These included funding tech incubators; the “Made in NY” marketing campaign to support small tech companies; the rapid extension of broadband access across the city; the city’s broad-reaching Open Data initiative, which makes city data available to the public and software developers; and the selection of Cornell and Technion, the Israel Institute of Technology, to open a huge new campus on Roosevelt Island.

To achieve the laudable objectives laid out in his inaugural speech, most notably narrowing the income gap, Mr. de Blasio should continue these policies. The technology and information boom needs to be encouraged: It is creating jobs for all corners of the city and helping to reduce the excessive dependence on finance and real estate."

Open Data Day, February 22, 2014; 2/1/14

Open Data Day, February 22, 2014:

[Excerpt] "What is this?

Open Data Day is a gathering of citizens in cities around the world to write applications, liberate data, create visualizations and publish analyses using open public data to show support for and encourage the adoption [sic] open data policies by the world's local, regional and national governments...

Librarians

I heard you folks like books and eat catalogs of data for breakfast. You beautiful people are going to scour the earth for interesting data, help the rest of us figure out what’s important, and generally be useful."

Can The Open-Data Revolution Change Our Democracies?; NPR/TED Staff, 1/31/14

NPR/TED Staff; Can The Open-Data Revolution Change Our Democracies? :

"About Beth Noveck's TEDTalk

Former White House deputy CTO shares her vision of practical openness: connecting bureaucracies to citizens, sharing data, and creating a truly participatory democracy.

About Beth Noveck

Beth Noveck explores what "open government" really means — not just freeing data from databases, but creating meaningful ways for citizens to collaborate with their governments. She served as the first U.S. deputy chief technology officer and director of the White House Open Government Initiative, which developed policy on transparency, participation and collaboration."

Artist Files Suit Over Missing Empire State Building Paintings; New York Times, 1/31/14

Randy Kennedy, New York Times; Artist Files Suit Over Missing Empire State Building Paintings:

"The paintings, by the New York artist Kysa Johnson, were commissioned by the building’s owners and installed in 2000. But last year, art collectors visiting the building to see the pieces could not find them and told Ms. Johnson, who asked the building’s current owner, the Empire State Realty Trust, what had happened to them. According to a lawsuit the artist filed this week in federal court in New York, the trust told her that the paintings “could not be located, were likely destroyed and therefore could not be returned to” her.

The suit — which says that Ms. Johnson retained ownership of the paintings under her commissioning contract — is unusual because it is not simply a property-loss case but is being pursued under the Visual Artists Rights Act, a copyright protection put into place in 1991 that safeguards the moral rights of artists against distortion, mutilation or destruction of their work."

Playwright Sues to Salvage Play Deconstructing ‘Three’s Company’; New York Times, 1/30/14

Patrick Healy, New York Times; Playwright Sues to Salvage Play Deconstructing ‘Three’s Company’ :

"The New York playwright David Adjmi, best known for Off Broadway satirical works like “Marie Antoinette,” went to federal court on Thursday to try to salvage his play “3C,” which has been tied up by the copyright owner of “Three’s Company,” the landmark television comedy that Mr. Adjmi deconstructs through a dark lens in “3C.”

In a 20-page complaint, which was accompanied by supportive comments from acclaimed theater artists like Jon Robin Baitz, Tony Kushner and Stephen Sondheim, Mr. Adjmi asked the Southern District Court of New York to declare that “3C” does not infringe on the copyright of “Three’s Company,” which ran from 1977 to 1984 and remains in syndication. Mr. Adjmi’s lawyers, citing the First Amendment and the legal doctrine of fair use, argue that “3C” is an original parody that only borrows some elements from the sitcom to examine its premise, character types, and homophobia and sexism in that era...

Mr. Adjmi’s lawyers cite multiple examples of parodies that were protected under the fair use doctrine, including the novel “The Wind Done Gone” (which re-tells much of “Gone With the Wind” from a slave’s perspective) and a “Saturday Night Live” sketch that featured a tourism jingle from Biblical times, “I Love Sodom,” sung to the tune of “I Love New York.” Plays like “Mr. Burns” (which uses elements from “The Simpsons”) and “Dog Sees God” (a parody of the Peanuts cartoons) have also successfully avoided copyright problems by taking personality traits and references from the original material and presenting them in wholly new ways."

Anant Agarwal: Why massively open online courses (still) matter; TED Talk via YouTube, 1/27/14

TED Talk via YouTube; Anant Agarwal: Why massively open online courses (still) matter:

"2013 was a year of hype for MOOCs (massively open online courses). Great big numbers and great big hopes were followed by some disappointing first results. But the head of edX, Anant Agarwal, makes the case that MOOCs still matter -- as a way to share high-level learning widely and supplement (but perhaps not replace) traditional classrooms. Agarwal shares his vision of blended learning, where teachers create the ideal learning experience for 21st century students."

Is the White House trying to blow up an open data bill?; Washington Post, 1/29/14

Andrea Peterson, Washington Post; Is the White House trying to blow up an open data bill? :

"The White House has previously expressed support for open data -- even issuing an executive order and open data policy requiring that data generated by the government in the future be made available in open, machine-readable formats. But a group of for-profit and nonprofit organizations called the Data Transparency Coalition says a leaked Office of Management and Budget version of their biggest legislation initiative, the Digital Accountability and Transparency Act or DATA Act, shows the administration trying to water down the legislation.

The DATA Act aims to standardize and publish a wide variety of U.S. government reports and data related to financial management, assistance and procurement. A version of the bill passed the House unanimously in 2012 and again on a vote of 388 to 1 in November 2013. But the bill did not make it to the floor in the Senate. Now Federal News Radio has leaked a document showing that the OMB wants to remove requirements for standardized formats, eliminate a mandate to make all data available from the same source and significantly delay implementation."

Prince drops $22M copyright suit against Facebook fans; CNet, 1/29/14

Dara Kerr, CNet; Prince drops $22M copyright suit against Facebook fans:

"The pop artist Prince is known for getting sue-crazy when it comes to copyright infringement of his work, but when he filed a $22 million lawsuit against some of his die-hard fans, it seemed he might have gone too far. Apparently, the artist has now dropped the suit, according to TMZ...

Despite the apparent difficulty in proving the case, Prince's lawyer told TMZ that the reason the suit was dropped was because the alleged infringers had stopped "engaging in piracy.""

Can open data improve GPs' take-up of innovations?; Guardian, 1/29/14

Kathleen Stokes, Guardian; Can open data improve GPs' take-up of innovations? :

"It's no secret that the world has woken up to the revolutionary potential of using data in the NHS and public services more generally. Whether big, open or personal, data can now help us predict patient readmission to hospital and identify potential cost savings for GP prescriptions. So how are these innovations impacting in our GP practices?

Nesta has worked with the centre for the advancement of sustainable medical innovation and Mastodon C to learn more about the take up of innovations by GP practices in England. Our starting point was the assumption that open data – data made freely available to anyone – can help us to better understand what is already taking place.

In our new report Which Doctors Take up Promising Ideas? New Insights from Open Data, we wanted to explore how making use of open data can help people understand trends and differences in service within primary care. Our research charts where, when and which GP practices across England have implemented promising innovations. It shows varied uptake of certain proven drugs, technologies and practices by GP surgeries.

The findings are exploratory but promising. They highlight several trends around how GP practices identify, decide upon and actually take up different innovations."

Pete Seeger, a Folk Revivalist Who Used His Voice to Bring Out a Nation’s; New York Times, 1/28/14

Jon Pareles, New York Times; Pete Seeger, a Folk Revivalist Who Used His Voice to Bring Out a Nation’s:

"Although Mr. Seeger summed up Vietnam-era frustration when he wrote “Waist Deep in the Big Muddy” and created a lasting antiwar parable with “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?,” he wasn’t simply a protest singer or propagandist. Like his father, the musicologist Charles Seeger, and his colleague the ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax, Pete Seeger was devoted to songs that had been passed on through generations of people singing and playing together. He was determined — in an era when recording was rarer and broadcasting limited — to get those songs heard and sung anew, lest they disappear.

That put him at the center of the folk revival of the 1950s and 1960s, in all its idealism, earnestness and contradictions. Collectors found songs that had archetypal resonance, sung in unpretty voices and played with regional quirks, and transcribed them to be learned from sheet music. The folk revival prized authenticity — the work song recorded in prison, the fiddle tune recorded on a back porch — and then diluted it as the making of amateur collegiate strum-alongs. Mr. Seeger and his fellow folk revivalists freely adapted old songs to new occasions, using durable old tunes to carry topical thoughts, speaking of a “folk tradition” of communal authorship and inevitable change. They would warp a song to preserve it. (In succeeding years, copyright problems could and did ensue.)"

Tarantino Sues Gawker for Posting Film Script; New York Times, 1/28/14

Michael Cieply, New York Times; Tarantino Sues Gawker for Posting Film Script:

"Quentin Tarantino filed a suit against Gawker Media, accusing the web news service of illegally posting on its Defamer site a link to his unproduced script titled “The Hateful Eight,” The Hollywood Reporter said on Monday."

Librarians Protest Canada Cutbacks; Chronicle of Higher Education via New York Times, 1/26/14

Karen Birchard and Jennifer Lewington, Chronicle of Higher Education via New York Times; Librarians Protest Canada Cutbacks:

"A move by the Canadian government to shrink the number of its departmental research libraries is drawing fire from some academics, who fear a loss of data and trained personnel and damage to the country’s ability to carry out research.

The closing of seven regional libraries in the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and the quiet elimination of more than two dozen libraries in other departments, might otherwise have passed largely unnoticed, given the modest cost savings...

Gail Shea, head of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, or D.F.O., adamantly denied any book burning. “Our government values these collections and will continue to strongly support it by continuing to add new material on an ongoing basis,” she said in a statement. “All materials for which D.F.O. has copyright will be preserved by the department.”

Despite such assurances, some academic researchers and librarians remain skeptical.

“My overwhelming feeling is that we don’t know exactly what some of the ramifications are for my future research or other people’s research because of the nonsystematic way it has been done,” said John Reynolds, a professor of aquatic ecology at Simon Fraser University who uses federal government fisheries data on British Columbia streams for his study of salmon sustainability.

He questioned why the government had failed to publish an inventory of library materials before and after the downsizing, including documents not covered by copyright."

Prince sues Facebook fans who shared links to live performances for copyright infringment [sic]; Belfast Telegraph, 1/27/14

Jess Denham, Belfast Telegraph; Prince sues Facebook fans who shared links to live performances for copyright infringment [sic]:

"Pop icon Prince is suing fans who posted his live performances on Facebook or blogs - to the tune of £605,000 each.

The "Purple Rain" singer filed a copyright lawsuit on 16 January in the Northern District of California, targeting 22 individuals he believes have committed "massive infringement and bootlegging" of his copyright...

A strong opposer of digital distribution, Prince famously stated his belief that "the internet is completely over" in 2010. He regularly forces video streaming websites such as YouTube and Vine to take down fan-uploaded footage of his concerts."

'New Girl' sued for copyright infringement; Entertainment Weekly, 1/22/14

Erin Strecker, Entertainment Weekly; 'New Girl' sued for copyright infringement:

"Fox’s New Girl is being accused of plagiarism, EW has confirmed.

According to court papers filed Jan. 16, Stephanie Counts and Shari Gold are suing New Girl creator Elizabeth Meriwether, William Morris Endeavor Entertainment, Peter Chernin, Jacob Kasdan, and Twenty-First Century Fox for copyright infringement.

In the lawsuit, which EW has obtained, Counts and Gold allege that prior to New Girl, they had a script for a pilot for their show hopeful Square One, which was met with favorable interest in the industry, but they weren’t able to make a deal."

How Government Can Make Open Data Work; InformationWeek, 1/22/14

Joel Gurin, InformationWeek; How Government Can Make Open Data Work:

"Will 2014 finally become the year of open data? We're certainly seeing evidence that open data is moving from the margins into the mainstream, with new uses for data that governments and other sources are making freely available to the public.

But if we're going to see open data's promise fulfilled, it will be important for governments, and the federal government in particular, to make it easier for the public to access and use their open data.

I've described open data as "accessible public data that people, companies, and organizations can use to launch new ventures, analyze patterns and trends, make data-driven decisions, and solve complex problems." As Bethann Pepoli recently wrote in InformationWeek, cities around the US are starting to embrace open data as a tool for good government and civic innovation.

The federal government is doing the same. The Obama administration has begun implementing its Open Data Policy, announced last May, which calls for government agencies to make their data open by default and work with companies and nonprofits to put the data to use. The most recent example occurred last week with the White House hosting two days of "datapaloozas" to encourage entrepreneurs, developers, and nonprofit organizations to apply government safety and education data.

I've participated in and studied the open data movement for the last three years. I've drawn on that experience and dozens of interviews for a new book I've written, Open Data Now. The book is meant to reach beyond a tech audience by illustrating how open data is impacting government policies and practices, innovation, consumer advocacy, and more. And as I learned in my research, open data's broadest impact may be as a kind of natural resource for business."

Government calls on coders to churn out apps using open data; Vancouver Sun, 1/22/14

Gillian Shaw, Vancouver Sun; Government calls on coders to churn out apps using open data:

Canada's federal government has an abundance of data, and is asking Canadian software programmers and innovators to figure out how to best use it...

In the first country wide open-data hackathon, dubbed CODE - Canadian Open Data Experience - Ottawa is calling on the nation's computing and design talent to use the government's open data to create apps that will help Canadians...

The 48-hour hackathon starts at 5 p.m. on Feb. 28 and ends at 5 p.m. on March 2. Participants can attend the CODE VIP Hub in Toronto on Feb. 28, or take part virtually - from homes, schools, universities and coffee shops across Canada. The government's Open Data portal was launched last year at data.gc.ca.

3-D Printing Moves Closer to the Mainstream; New York Times, 1/20/14

1/20/14, New York Times; 3-D Printing Moves Closer to the Mainstream:

As I’ve written in the past, all this newfangled 3-D printing will bring with it newfangled copyright issues. The entire concept of ownership and copyright is up for grabs since 3-D objects cannot be copyrighted the same way music, videos and art can be...

“Copyright doesn’t necessarily protect useful things,” Michael Weinberg, a senior staff lawyer at Public Knowledge, a digital advocacy group in Washington, told me in 2011 when 3-D printing was still on the fringes. “If an object is purely aesthetic it will be protected by copyright, but if the object does something, it is not the kind of thing that can be protected.”

U.S. justices referee 'Raging Bull' copyright fight; Reuters, 1/21/14

Lawrence Hurley, Reuters; U.S. justices referee 'Raging Bull' copyright fight:

"U.S. Supreme Court justices sparred on Tuesday over how to resolve a copyright dispute concerning an early screenplay for what became the iconic boxing movie "Raging Bull."...

The court is hearing a claim brought by Paula Petrella, daughter of deceased screenwriter Frank Petrella. She says MGM Holdings Inc and Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment owe her money for infringing the copyright of a 1963 screenplay upon which she alleges the movie was based. Fox, a subsidiary of Twenty-First Century Fox Inc is a defendant because it has the rights to distribute MGM movies on DVD...

The legal question is whether MGM can argue in its defense that Petrella, who sued in 2009, waited too long to assert her claim."

Pittsburgh's data guru Meixell is ready; first challenge is 311 system; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 1/19/14

Moriah Balingit, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; Pittsburgh's data guru Meixell is ready; first challenge is 311 system:

"During his campaign and his first days in office, Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto talked enthusiastically about how data -- big data, open data, performance-based budgeting -- will transform city governance.

Now that the rhetorical rubber must hit the road, he has put a face on that initiative: 28-year-old Laura Meixell, whom he hired as the city's first data and analytics manager. Ms. Meixell, a native of Bethlehem, Pa., has applied her savvy with data to help manage everything from Louisville's overcrowded jails to studying an invasive ant species in Hawaii...

On Tuesday, about two weeks before she settled into Bloomfield, Ms. Meixell stood alongside Mr. Peduto and Councilwoman Natalia Rudiak in announcing the city's first Open Data Ordinance, which the councilwoman proposed at that day's council meeting. If passed, the ordinance would lead to the creation of a new city website that would host reams of previously unavailable or hard-to-access data on everything from crime to potholes to 311 calls.

It's information that would be useful both for residents who want an inside look at city government and for policymakers who could use the data to inform how they marshal resources...

Ms. Meixell, a graduate of the University of Pittsburgh, got an early start in public service."

Sarah Palin loses bid to move copyright lawsuit against her to Alaska; New York Daily News, 1/20/14

Daniel Beekman, New York Daily News; Sarah Palin loses bid to move copyright lawsuit against her to Alaska:

"Newspaper publisher North Jersey Media Group sued Palin and her political action committee in Manhattan Federal Court last September, claiming copyright infringement over the use of an iconic 9/11 photograph...Manhattan Federal Judge Alvin Hellerstein instead moved the case to where the plaintiff is located, New Jersey Federal Court, in a ruling Friday. The photo in question depicts three New York City firefighters hoisting an American flag on the rubble at Ground Zero."

Nearly All German National Library Metadata Now Available Under CC0 License; Library Journal, 1/16/14

Gary Price, Library Journal; Nearly All German National Library Metadata Now Available Under CC0 License:

http://www.infodocket.com/2014/01/16/nearly-all-german-national-library-metadata-now-available-under-cc0-license/

Congress Passes Spending Bill Requiring Free Access to Publicly Funded Research; Library Journal, 1/17/14

Gary Price, Library Journal; Congress Passes Spending Bill Requiring Free Access to Publicly Funded Research:

From Creative Commons Both the U.S. House of Representative and Senate have passed the 2014 omnibus appropriations legislation. President Obama is expected to sign the bill shortly. What’s so special about this legislation? Federal agencies with research budgets of at least $100 million per year will be required provide the public with free online access to scholarly articles generated with federal funds no later than 12 months after publication in a peer-reviewed journal.

Books go online for free in Norway; Telegraph, 1/16/14

Martin Chilton, Telegraph; Books go online for free in Norway:

More than 135,000 books still in copyright are going online for free in Norway after an innovative scheme by the National Library ensured that publishers and authors are paid for the project. The copyright-protected books (including translations of foreign books) have to be published before 2000 and the digitising has to be done with the consent of the copyright holders. National Library of Norway chief Vigdis Moe Skarstein said the project is the first of its kind to offer free online access to books still under copyright, which in Norway expires 70 years after the author's death...

The books are available in Norway at the site bokhylla.no ("bookshelf" in Norwegian) but access is limited to internet users in Norway (and foreign researchers) and the books cannot be downloaded. Some authors or publishing firms have objected but only 3,500 books have been removed from the list and most of these have been school textbooks.

Copyright Week; Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), 1/13-1/18/14

Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF); Copyright Week: https://www.eff.org/copyrightweek

The End of Ownership: Why You Need to Fight America’s Copyright Laws; Wired.com, 1/17/14

Kyle Wiens, Wired.com; The End of Ownership: Why You Need to Fight America’s Copyright Laws: "Copyright is like the many-headed, hostile-when-provoked hydra. And just like a hydra, chopping off one head — solving one issue — won’t work. Congress could legalize unlocking phones on Monday, tablets on Tuesday, cars on Wednesday, and a different gizmo every day from now until the end of week let alone year. It won’t matter. The day after that, there will be yet another new computerized product, a new thing with code for its connective tissue. As long as “The Law of Electronic Eventuality” marches on, and as long as companies can make money by keeping users out of their own stuff, they will … and so copyright law will never catch up. Our current copyright laws clearly don’t account for the role technology plays in our lives. But I was born a tinkerer, so I believe that with enough energy, ingenuity, and passion, anything can be fixed — and I mean that both metaphorically and literally (with our right to repair). If we want to preserve consumer rights against copyright power grabs, we’ll have to aim at the heart of the hydra. We can’t afford to wait another 40 years for Congress make a new copyright law. It has to happen now; here’s how."

Pittsburgh councilwoman Rudiak introduces open data bill; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 1/14/14

Moriah Balingit, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; Pittsburgh councilwoman Rudiak introduces open data bill: "Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto and Councilwoman Natalia Rudiak announced a proposal Tuesday to make a wealth of information -- from the location of potholes, to building permits, to paving schedules -- available to the public on a new city website and for consumption by the tech community who could transform the data into useful apps. Following a morning new conference, Ms. Rudiak introduced before council the Open Data Ordinance, a piece of legislation that will not only lay the groundwork for the new initiative, but could change the way citizens access public data altogether. "We want to blow the doors of this building open to provide information," Mr. Peduto said."

Dude, You Can’t Copyright That Hookah; Wired.com, 1/9/14

David Kravets, Wired.com; Dude, You Can’t Copyright That Hookah: "A California hookah pipe maker’s copyright infringement lawsuit against a rival went up in smoke today when a federal appeals court ruled that hookahs are not copyrightable. The appellate decision is believed to be the first concerning the shape of the smoking instrument’s water container. Inhale Inc. claimed Starbuzz Tobacco was infringing its base design registered with the U.S. Copyright Office in 2011... The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals tossed the suit today, agreeing with a lower-court judge that the pipe’s base cannot be copyrighted... Under copyright law, the water container is considered a “useful article,” the court wrote."

The copyright case: Sherlock Holmes at the center of legal debate; Associated Press via CBS News, 1/3/14

Associated Press via CBS News; The copyright case: Sherlock Holmes at the center of legal debate: ""Whatever decision they make will essentially determine the fate of many characters, not just Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, but very intricate characters such as James Bond. ... What happens as copyrights expire on Ian Fleming's original stories?" said Doyle estate attorney William Zieske. The ruling could also weaken the value of the Sherlock franchise to the point that major publishers and movie producers could also decide to move ahead with projects without licensing deals, said Paul Supnik, a Beverly Hills, California, attorney specializing in copyright and entertainment law who was not connected with the case. "At the very least it's going to affect the bargaining power as to what the estate can do in trying to sell it to the studio," Supnik said. At the heart of the dispute is whether a character can be copyright protected over an entire series of works."

Authors Guild appeals decision in Google Books copyright suit; CNet, 12/30/13

Dara Kerr, CNet; Authors Guild appeals decision in Google Books copyright suitt: "The Authors Guild has stuck to its word in promising to appeal a federal judge's decision to dismiss its copyright infringement lawsuit against Google Books. The trade association that represents book authors has filed an appeal to the Second Circuit court, according to Publishers Weekly... The Authors Guild believes that Google's project exceeds fair use and is now looking for another court to back its opinion. Authors Guild executive director Paul Aiken told Publishers Weekly that Chin's decision was "a fundamental challenge to copyright that merits review by a higher court.""

Report: Open Data Could be $3 Trillion Boon; FEDweek, 12/30/13

FEDweek; Report: Open Data Could be $3 Trillion Boon: "Standardized, machine-readable information, much of it government-generated has contributed to a push toward leveraging "big data" to gain new insight and drive innovation, and a recent report from McKinsey suggests seven sectors in particular could combine to generate over $3 trillion in additional value from open data. Open data (like that increasingly being made available at data.gov) is "giving rise to hundreds of entrepreneurial businesses and helping established companies to segment markets, define new products and services, and improve the efficiency and effectiveness of operations," according to the report".

Veterans Affairs Website Offers Open Data; Information Week, 12/30/13

Elena Malykhina, Information Week; Veterans Affairs Website Offers Open Data: "The Department of Veterans Affairs has rolled out a new addition to its website as part of the federal government's over-arching Open Data Initiatives effort. Visitors to the VA site now have access to APIs, tools, and resources to develop applications using the VA's open data... Driving the open-data effort at the VA is Marina Martin, a former senior advisor to federal chief technology officer Todd Park. Martin was appointed as the agency's CTO earlier this year and has extensive background in open data as a Web developer and business efficiency expert. She had worked on Project Open Data, a collection of code, tools, and case studies to help federal agencies adopt the Open Data Policy, which the Office of Management and Budget and the Office of Science and Technology Policy released in May. The Open Data Policy, together with President Obama's executive order, also issued in May, urged government agencies to make previously unavailable data accessible to entrepreneurs, researchers, and the public in open, machine-readable formats. Agencies now are required to create an internal index of their data, make a public list of their public data, and list all data that can be made public. They also have access to an open online repository of tools and best practices to assist them in integrating the policy into their operations. "Data is a valuable national asset that should be open and available to the public, to entrepreneurs, to scientists, and others -- instead of being trapped in closed government systems," Nick Sinai, federal deputy CTO in the Office of Science and Technology Policy, wrote in a blog post on Data.gov in late October."

New Sherlock Holmes mystery: Where's my copyright?; Los Angeles Times, 12/30/13

Hector Tobar, Los Angeles Times; New Sherlock Holmes mystery: Where's my copyright? : "The court case required U.S. District Judge Rubén Castillo to become something of a Sherlock Holmes expert, and in a 22-page ruling issued last week in Chicago, he began by summarizing the four novels and 56 short stories Conan Doyle wrote about the fictional detective: The character first appeared in 1887. The final 10 Holmes stories appeared in the U.S. in 1923... Castillo's ruling allows anyone to use the Holmes character as long as they don’t use elements from the 1923 stories, which include details about Holmes’ and Dr. Watson’s past. "Conan Doyle fails to offer a bright line rule or workable legal standard for determining when characters are sufficiently developed to warrant copyright protection through an entire series," the judge wrote."

Happy Birthday; On The Media, 12/27/13

On The Media; Happy Birthday: "Happy Birthday to You" is one of the most popular songs in the English language. It is also copyrighted. On the Media producer PJ Vogt investigates the long, surprising, and contentious history of the argument over just who owns the rights to the song."

Open access 2013: A year of gaining momentum; Scientific American, 12/26/13

Hilda Bastian, Scientific American; Open access 2013: A year of gaining momentum: "Was this the year open access for science reached critical mass? One hypothesis suggests that a transformative group needs to reach one-third to be prominent and persisting. Rogers’ theory on the diffusion of innovations that will eventually reach saturation level says the first 2.5% are innovators. By the time you get to 16% the phase of early adopters could be ending. If that’s the trajectory that accessible scientific publications is on, one estimate suggests it went past early adopter level in 2011, when about 17% of scholarly articles were available within 12 months (12% immediately). There had been just under 8% published in open access journals in 2009."

2013 in Review: The Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement; Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), 12/28/13

Parker Higgins and Maira Sutton, Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF); 2013 in Review: The Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement: "Negotiations over the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) intensified in 2013, as trade delegates from the 12 participating countries aimed for (and ultimately missed) a year-end target for completing the sprawling agreement. Although the secretive nature of the negotiations means the public can't really know how far along it is, both leaked position documents and public statements indicate that there are still major unresolved areas of disagreement in the 29-chapter deal. The biggest TPP story this year was the publication by WikiLeaks in November of the chapter titled "Intellectual Property." Unfortunately, its contents confirmed many of our worst fears: from ratcheting up copyright term lengths around the world, to boxing in fair use, to mandating a draconian legal regime around DRM software, section after section contained clauses plucked from corporate wishlists and snubbed the public interest altogether. Against that backdrop, it makes sense that opposition to the agreement is mounting around the world."

Robin Thicke, Fair Use, Jackson v. AEG: Entertainment's Top Legal Disputes of 2013; Billboard, 12/27/13

Eriq Gardner, Billboard; Robin Thicke, Fair Use, Jackson v. AEG: Entertainment's Top Legal Disputes of 2013: "The year was so jam-packed with legal tussling that many show-stopping developments failed to make the cut of our top legal disputes from 2013...But in our view, here, in reverse order, are the ones that were the most gripping from 2013:... 7. Robin Thicke looks to protect "Blurred Lines" from theft claims For as long as there has been pop music, there's been fighting over who stole or borrowed or sampled what from whom. When Robin Thicke and his producers filed a lawsuit this past summer against Marvin Gaye's children, a few things raised the bar: The lawsuit was a preemptive strike against allegations that the year's most successful song was a derivative of Gaye's "Got to Give It Up." The litigation now involves both sides enlisting some of the industry's most esteemed lawyers to wrangle over the issue of when similarity in songcraft rises to copyright infringement. Now there's even a counterclaim that raises the issue of a conflict and lack of diligence by one of the industry's biggest song publishers... 5. "Fair Use" explodes as a public issue Technology has made duplication easier than ever. A counterpoint to copyright is fair use, or lawful exceptions to a rights-holder's ability to control derivatives. This past year brought two huge decisions on this front. First, after a nearly decade-long fight, Google got a federal judge to declare that its scanning of some 20 million library books was a fair use. Second, an appeals court concluded that artist Richard Prince had made fair use of most of photographer Patrick Cariou's work. Both cases are ongoing (on appeal or back at the trial court). Meanwhile, the issue of what's transformative and what's not has entered the public stream of conscious in other ways -- from Sony Pictures' win over a William Faulkner quote referenced in Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris to the recent controversy over a toy company's use of The Beastie Boys' "Girls.""

YouTube's Merry Christmas: Letting Large Music Publishers Steal Money From Guy Singing Public Domain Christmas Carol; TechDirt.com, 12/24/13

Mike Masnick, TechDirt.com; YouTube's Merry Christmas: Letting Large Music Publishers Steal Money From Guy Singing Public Domain Christmas Carol: "Yet another in our ongoing series of stories concerning YouTube's broken ContentID system. While the company has still mostly remained mute over its recent policy change, which resulted in a ton of bogus ContentID claims, an even worse problem is that ContentID does serious harm to fair use and public domain videos. The latest example of this comes from Adam Manley, who recently posted a nice video about the month of December and how awesome it is. The second half of the video has him singing the famous song "Silent Night." "Silent Night" was composed in 1818. It is, without question, in the public domain. There is no question about this at all. Adam's rendition of the song is him singing it alone (so not using anyone else's recording). There is simply no question at all that what he did does not violate anyone's copyright. At all. So, what happened? YouTube's ContentID told him that he received not one, not two, but three separate copyright claims on the video, from three of the largest music publishers in the world -- basically all of the publishing arms of the major labels."

The case against Kim Dotcom, finally revealed; ArsTechnica.com, 12/23/13

Joe Mullin, ArsTechnica.com; The case against Kim Dotcom, finally revealed: "Nearly two years after Kim Dotcom's New Zealand mansion was raided by police, US authorities have made their case as to why the man behind Megaupload shouldn't simply go bankrupt like previous copyright violators before have—he should go to jail, they argue. In a 191-page "Summary of Evidence," government lawyers marshal Skype chats, financial data, and dozens of e-mails to make their case that Megaupload was a criminal network designed from the start to distribute copyrighted material. It discusses the payments made to heavy uploaders to encourage them to drive traffic to the files of movies and TV shows they hid online. Megaupload built a wall of plausible deniability, prosecutors claim, by disabling any internal search of files stored on Megaupload, meant as a "cyberlocker" site. But its administrators, who include the men behind Dotcom's new site Mega, traded e-mails that show the real strategy."

Libraries are making scholarship accessible to all; American Libraries, 12/23/13

Meredith Farkas, American Libraries; Libraries are making scholarship accessible to all: "Many academic libraries are working to make the scholarly and creative output of their communities widely accessible. They are also supporting the creation of sustainable publishing models through education, institutional repositories, and open access (OA) publishing... Some libraries are also developing their own digital publishing imprints in an effort to offer a solid alternative to traditional publishing. The University of Pittsburgh Library System, for example, offers a platform and support for publishing OA journals. It already publishes 30 OA scholarly journals using the Open Journal Systems platform and offers print-on-demand via an Espresso Book Machine. This arrangement supports journal editors in making their publications open access."

Illegal Video Downloads Continue Upward Trajectory; New York Times, 12/27/13

Nick Bilton, New York Time; Illegal Video Downloads Continue Upward Trajectory: "Some content creators finally admitted that illegal downloads aren’t all bad. In September, a senior Netflix executive said the company used pirating websites to determine the genre of new shows viewers might be interested in. “With the purchase of a series, we look at what does well on piracy sites,” said Kelly Merryman, vice president of content acquisition at Netflix. HBO also acknowledged that piracy can be great free advertising. Time Warner’s chief executive, Jeffrey L. Bewkes, said on an earnings call that pirated content can be “a tremendous word-of-mouth thing.” And David Petrarca, the director of Game of Thrones, said during a panel discussion at Perth’s Writers Festival, that theft can create “cultural buzz” around a show that traditional methods can not. Those statements seemed like a breath of fresh air. Content companies like HBO could probably do more to decrease illegal downloads, namely by giving consumers more legal access points to shows. But but doing that, the companies would probably lose out on some of the underground attention that they also value."

A judge just gave an elementary lesson on copyright to the owners of Sherlock Holmes; Washington Post, 12/27/13

Brian Fung, Washington Post; A judge just gave an elementary lesson on copyright to the owners of Sherlock Holmes: "As a character, Holmes was developed over the course of Conan Doyle's entire writing career, not laid out in a single book, the estate claimed. But Judge Rubén Castillo ruled otherwise, saying that every Holmes story that followed the first ought to be considered a derivative based on the original. As far as the court is concerned, Holmes and Watson were fully formed characters by the last page of "A Study in Scarlet."... The caveat, of course, is that anything Holmes published in or after 1923 still enjoys protection, meaning that any element that appears exclusively in those stories can't be used. The impact of Castillo's decision probably won't be limited to Sherlock Holmes. Some of pop culture's most important characters, such as Mickey Mouse and Superman, will see their copyrights expire in the next couple of decades. If a "this-but-not-that" approach to copyright winds up taking hold, we might expect a debate soon about which features of those characters will be covered (and not covered)."

Sherlock Holmes is public property … but steer clear of Watson's second wife; Guardian, 12/27/13

Tom McCarthy, Guardian; Sherlock Holmes is public property … but steer clear of Watson's second wife: "Prospective authors of Sherlock Holmes fan fiction take heed: under a new court ruling, you may write that Sherlock Holmes was a cocaine-addicted martial arts aficionado cohabiting occasionally at 221B Baker Street, with a friend called Dr Watson. You may not, however, freely describe Dr Watson's own athletic background, the juicy fact of his second marriage or the circumstances of Holmes's retirement. A US district court in Illinois found itself wading into the details of the fictional detective's imaginary life this week in a copyright ruling on a forthcoming collection of original short stories featuring Holmes characters. An editor of the new book, In the Company of Sherlock Holmes, asked the court in effect to enlarge the elements of the Holmes story that are in the public domain. The court reinforced the public domain status of much of the work but denied part of the motion by the plaintiff, Leslie Klinger... Ten Holmes short stories, however, were published after 1923, the public domain threshold pinpointed by Melville Nimmer in his authoritative Nimmer on Copyright... The ruling applies only to the US. The entire Sherlock Holmes canon has been in the public domain in Britain since the end of 2000."

The Vast Majority of Raw Data From Old Scientific Studies May Now Be Missing; Smithsonian.com, 12/19/13

Smithsonian.com; The Vast Majority of Raw Data From Old Scientific Studies May Now Be Missing: "One of the foundations of the scientific method is the reproducibility of results. In a lab anywhere around the world, a researcher should be able to study the same subject as another scientist and reproduce the same data, or analyze the same data and notice the same patterns. This is why the findings of a study published today in Current Biology are so concerning. When a group of researchers tried to email the authors of 516 biological studies published between 1991 and 2011 and ask for the raw data, they were dismayed to find that more 90 percent of the oldest data (from papers written more than 20 years ago) were inaccessible. In total, even including papers published as recently as 2011, they were only able to track down the data for 23 percent... These might seem like mundane obstacles, but scientists are just like the rest of us—they change email addresses, they get new computers with different drives, they lose their file backups—so these trends reflect serious, systemic problems in science... There’s also the fact that so much of this research is paid for with public funding, much of it coming through grants that stipulate that resulting data be made freely available to the public. What’s the solution? Some journals—including Molecular Ecology, of which Vines is a managing editor—have adopted policies that require authors to submit raw data along with their papers, allowing the journal itself to archive the data in perpetuity. Although journals, like people, are susceptible to changing email addresses and technological obsolescence, these problems can be much more easily managed at the institutional scale."

Sherlock Holmes Is in the Public Domain, American Judge Rules; New York Times, 12/27/13

Jennifer Schuessler, New York Times; Sherlock Holmes Is in the Public Domain, American Judge Rules: "A federal judge has issued a declarative judgment stating that Holmes, Watson, 221B Baker Street, the dastardly Professor Moriarty and other elements included in the 50 Holmes works Arthur Conan Doyle published before Jan. 1, 1923, are no longer covered by United States copyright law and can be freely used by creators without paying any licensing fee to the Conan Doyle estate... The judge did caution, however, that elements introduced in the 10 stories published after 1923 — such as the fact that Watson played rugby for Blackheath — remain protected... Benjamin Allison, a lawyer for the Conan Doyle estate, said it was exploring an appeal but asserted that the ruling did not imperil any existing licensing agreements or the estate’s separate claims under trademark law."

‘Game of Thrones,’ ‘Breaking Bad’ Most Pirated TV Shows of 2013; Variety, 12/26/13

Variety, Todd Spangler; ‘Game of Thrones,’ ‘Breaking Bad’ Most Pirated TV Shows of 2013: "HBO’s “Game of Thrones” and AMC’s “Breaking Bad” have the dubious distinction of being the most-downloaded shows of 2013 on illegal file-sharing services, according to piracy news site TorrentFreak. The “Game of Thrones” season 3 finale was downloaded 5.9 million times, most within one week after it aired in June, and “Breaking Bad” — which scored record ratings for its series finale — saw 4.2 million downloads of the ep. “Game of Thrones” also took the crown as 2012′s most-pirated TV show. Digital piracy has long been a source of concern for Hollywood and in other industries. But recently some execs have pointed out that the economic harms of illegal file sharing are mitigated by its promotional benefits."

Young musicians get lessons in the law; Boston Globe, 12/25/13

James H. Burnett III, Boston Globe; Young musicians get lessons in the law: "The setting was the august boardroom of Goodwin Procter, a global law firm based in Boston, and the topics were the potentially dry-as-dust issues of copyrights, intellectual property rights, and fair use. The potential clients? Seventy teenagers, engaged, enthusiastic, and most certainly culturally tuned in, from some of Greater Boston’s poorer communities. As members of the Music & Youth Initiative, a nonprofit music training and mentoring program, they joined with three lawyers on a recent Thursday evening to understand their rights as songwriters. The teens peppered the attorneys with a variety of questions facing young musicians today: Can members of the public copy and download music they find in social media forums? What’s the legal recourse to plagiarism? How much can one “borrow” from another’s work without it being theft? The overarching themes were avoiding legal trouble and making sure your creations can’t be weasled away from you."

Maria Pallante, Head of US Copyright Office, To Meet With Music Creators: Exclusive; Billboard, 12/18/13

Billboard; Maria Pallante, Head of US Copyright Office, To Meet With Music Creators: Exclusive: "The Recording Academy is convening leadership roundtables between music creators and U.S. Copyright Office register of copyrights and director Maria Pallante. The initiative ties in with Pallante's stated goal of hearing from the various stakeholders -- leading performers, songwriters and studio professionals -- of the current discussions on copyright. The roundtables will begin in New York on Jan. 14 and will continue to other Academy chapters contingent upon on the availability of Pallante and her team. The roundtables are part of a larger review of copyright law begun this year by Rep. Bob Goodlatte, the new chairman of the House Judiciary Committee... In the following Q&A, Pallante discusses the many music copyright issues now under review, her office's role in creating copyright legislation and the challenges ahead... What kind of timeline are you expecting for the discussions that lead up to actual action by Congress? I don't know. [Goodlatte] had six hearings, if you include the one he gave me, since March. We haven't had that many copyright hearings in a very, very long time. And he's announced three more. In the next few months there will be one on the scope of exclusive rights, there will be one on the scope of fair use, and there will be one on notice and take down provisions of the DMCA... We've got other provisions we've been working on for a really long time. We've been working on the public performance in sound recordings issue for a decade, if not longer. We've got orphan works issues. We've got pre-'72 sound recordings that we think should be federalized. We've got analog library exception rules that don't translate into the digital age."

Using copyright to keep repair manuals secret undermines circular economy; Guardian, 12/20/13

Kyle Wiens, Guardian; Using copyright to keep repair manuals secret undermines circular economy: "Perhaps it was characteristic of a generation touched by the Great Depression, but in my grandfather's era, repair information was practically public domain.... Ironically, we now live in an age where information has never been more abundant, and yet every day more repair manuals disappear. It's not an accident. Manufacturers of computers, mobile phones, appliances, and cars still create repair manuals for every product they ship. You're just not allowed to have them anymore. And that gap in repair information is hindering our efforts to create a circular economy.... It's unclear whether companies like Toshiba and Apple are within their rights. No one can legally copyright facts or procedures but you can copyright any form of creative work, like writing. Manuals, despite their lack of creative or artistic merit, are a form of writing. Companies aren't going out on a limb by hiding them behind the shield of copyright."

You'll Never Guess Where This FBI Agent Left a Secret Interrogation Manual; Mother Jones, 12/20/13

Nick Baumann, Mother Jones; You'll Never Guess Where This FBI Agent Left a Secret Interrogation Manual: "In a lapse that national security experts call baffling, a high-ranking FBI agent filed a sensitive internal manual detailing the bureau's secret interrogation procedures with the Library of Congress, where anyone with a library card can read it... The 70-plus-page manual ended up in the Library of Congress, thanks to its author, an FBI official who made an unexplainable mistake. This FBI supervisory special agent, who once worked as a unit chief in the FBI's counterterrorism division, registered a copyright for the manual in 2010 and deposited a copy with the US Copyright Office, where members of the public can inspect it upon request. What's particularly strange about this episode is that government documents cannot be copyrighted. "A document that has not been released does not even need a copyright," says Steven Aftergood, a government secrecy expert at the Federation of American Scientists. "Who is going to plagiarize from it? Even if you wanted to, you couldn't violate the copyright because you don't have the document. It isn't available." "The whole thing is a comedy of errors," he adds. "It sounds like gross incompetence and ignorance." Julian Sanchez, a fellow with the libertarian Cato Institute who has studied copyright policy, was harsher: "Do they not cover this in orientation? [Sensitive] documents should not be placed in public repositories—and, by the way, aren't copyrightable. How do you even get a clearance without knowing this stuff?""